The yard outside the servant’s dormitory was small and walled, with a well at its center and a few neat rows of herbs along the walls. It provided enough privacy to wash without observation. He used the slim bar of lye soap found in a bowl by the trough, and dipped his hair afterwards, giving his scalp a good scrubbing with the soap and hoping he’d picked up nothing invasive from close association with the ogres. Bloodraven had seemed clean enough, but the others had cared little to nothing for routine baths, at least on the march. He wrung his hair out as best he could and resigned himself for sleeping on a damp pillow, for he couldn’t wait for it to dry before taking advantage of the bunk. He donned the new trousers, folding the tunic over the end of the bunk before collapsing onto it.
“Yhalen? Wake up.”
A very low voice buzzed in his ear, cutting through the dubious comfort of sleep. He’d been dreaming of unwholesome things—of himself small and helpless under an overwhelming collection of muscle and bone and flesh. He whimpered, flinching away, and the light touch on his shoulder withdrew.
He opened his eyes, hardly knowing what to expect upon this wakening and found himself looking up into the round face and large eyes of a girl. A familiar girl. Meliah. Who looked considerably healthier washed and cleaned and combed than she had when she’d been in his company.
“You’re alive,” she said, stating the painfully obvious. “It’s a miracle.”
He rather thought a miracle might imply a plethora of good fortune instead of that which he’d encountered, but the girl’s face was too filled with weary happiness to point that out.
“As are you,” he replied politely. Since she was stating plain fact, he saw no reason not to do the same when nothing else particularly worthwhile came to his sleep-befuddled mind.
“You evaded the beasts. I was sure they’d catch you. The gods must smile on you to grant you such luck.”
He sighed, seeing no reason to delve into the truth of the matter, and rose, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and trying to get his bearings in this strange place with a girl he only barely knew, crouching next to his bed.
“Do you know how long I’ve slept?”
“It’s evening,” she said. “Almost dusk. They brought you in this morning.”
So he’d slept the afternoon away then. His body was grateful for it, though a few more hours would have been nice. He saw the tunic at the end of the cot and reached for it, pulling it on over his head and grateful when it slid down to cover the mark.
“I tried to see you earlier, but they’re keeping most folk out of the keep, so it was hard for me to get inside. There’s bread and stew to be had,” she offered hopefully. “Our lord and lady are generous. It’s 65
being handed out in the yard by the kitchen. Will you come with me to eat?”
He was hungry again, the prospect of food not given to him like a dog, a morsel at a time, most appealing. He ran fingers through the mess of his hair, pulling it back finally into a tail at his neck and tying it off with a string plucked from the hem of his tunic. He’d take the time to comb it and braid it later.
Meliah watched him with half lowered lashes and finally said when he’d finished, “I’ve never seen such hair on a man. Is it the way of your people?”
He shrugged, fingering the one small braid that fell down from beside his ear.
“This is a hunter’s braid. I was allowed to make it when I made my first kill and properly thanked the Goddess for the bounty she provided. The braid down the back is the mark of a man grown—a mark of honor.” He self-consciously pulled at the loose hair at the end of the tail as he added, “Though I’ve been lacking in that of late, so I suppose it’s no great loss that it’s been loose more often than not.”
“I’ll braid it for you after we eat,” she said, after a moment, smiling up at him with a little less shyness than one would expect from a girl suggesting such a thing.
It was tantamount to asking to share his bed. But she wasn’t Ydregi, so perhaps she didn’t know.
He cast her a look askance, trying to gather wits that he hadn’t had about him for many, many days.
There was a certain look of speculation in her eyes that suggested that perhaps she did know. It was flattering, and though in the past Yhalen had never been one to turn away an offer of sex—at the moment he’d had rather too much of it forced upon him to find interest in this girl. Better to pretend it was an innocent offer.
The stew was more of the same he’d partaken of earlier in the day, this time outside in the courtyard amidst the gathered villagers. No one afforded him much attention, dressed as he was in clothing much like their own. He and Meliah sat against the outer wall and used the crusty bread to soak up the last of the gravy, then dipped water from the central well to wash it all down.
“I heard,” he said, “That the child didn’t recover from his injuries. I’m sorry.”
She looked down, a sad smile on her face. “He was always a sickly baby. Poor thing. There’s nothing left at all of his family now. He’ll be with his mum, at least, on the other side.”
There was a commotion that grew from a soft murmur at the gates, to a greater cry of excitement.
Men at arms and knights rushed forth from the keep and the surrounding courtyard, yelling for the plain folk to move back out of the way.
“What is it?” Yhalen asked, jostled against the wall by the press of the crowd.
“I don’t know,” Meliah called back. “Perhaps they bring back the dead.”
Perhaps they did. The gates creaked open and a line of knights and soldiers rode in, some of them wounded and slumped upon the backs of their horses. Some were thrown across the saddles like bags of grain. A great cry went up from those closest to the procession of returning warriors.
“They’ve taken one of the monsters,” a woman’s shrill voice cried out. “Kill it! Kill it!”
The crowd surged forward and men at arms pushed the villagers back under the threat of violence.
There were steps on the outer wall, leading up to the battlements. Yhalen pushed his way through the press and climbed up a few steps to better see the incoming men.
A great creaking cart, pulled by two heavy horses, followed the line of knights. He thought it might have been one of the ogres’ carts, bereft of their great beasts of burden. Men at arms surrounded it, mounted knights at each side and behind it, with lances held at the ready. It had been emptied of everything save for a large, blood-caked, motionless body.
But not that large. Not as large as a full-blooded ogre. Chains encircled arms and legs, fastening them to the stout timbers of the cart. Blood seeped onto the floorboards and stained pale ocher-green skin. Though the tangled, matted hair covered most of the face, there was no doubt as to the identity of the prisoner. Whether he was actually alive, though, seemed in doubt.
Yhalen molded himself back against the cool stone of the wall, shuddering, hardly able to catch his breath. He shut his eyes to blot out the details as the cart passed on towards the keep. He couldn’t shut out the cries of the people, the questions and demands for swift justice. He sank down onto the steps, weak-kneed all of a sudden. They’d call on him sooner or later, he knew. They’d summon him to look on Bloodraven and confirm what he was and who.
He didn’t want to. Most adamantly he didn’t. He looked towards the gates, still open, with men still trudging in and wondered if he might not be able to slip out and lose himself in the land outside.
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But the forest was a good ways distant, and the guards on the wall would spot a man fleeing across the tilled fields.
Goddess. He leaned his head against the wall, fighting off nausea. He’d thought he’d escaped. He’d thought he could put it behind him—but they’d brought the substance of his nightmares into this very keep.
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Yhalen had the castle smithy remove the collar. It was no pleasant procedure, himself face down against a human-sized anvil and bracing against the impact as the heat-welded seal was hammered loose. The smithy asked to keep the piece of bronze and Yhalen happily consigned it to him, well rid of it and the weight of what it represented. If only he could be as easily free of the mark upon his back.
He’d seen it for the first time in detail in a polished metal mirror hanging on one of the castle halls. It wasn’t a particularly unappealing design—it was simply unasked for and unwanted as too vivid a reminder of the nightmare he’d survived.
He walked in dread afterwards, cold and trembly for no good reason, save that the brand made him imagine the face of his captor all too well—also reminding him that that same elegantly broad, inhuman face was somewhere in the depths of this castle.
He’d had to part with Meliah over her prattling on about it. There was too much glee in her voice and in her eyes at the prospect of the vengeance her lord would take for the murdered villagers. Too much speculation on what that vengeance would consist of and too much expectation of Yhalen’s energetic agreement on the matter. It wasn’t that he didn’t think retaliation was due—he just felt sick in the depths of his stomach hearing the gruesome details bantered around the courtyard. He felt sick when they looked at him, waiting for him to add his own wishes to the list.
If they brought Bloodraven’s head out now and placed it on a pike on the wall as a warning to any who might think about attacking this castle right now, it would be by far preferable to listening for days to the all too vivid, all too horrible imaginations of the folk here as they theorized on what was happening in the dungeons under this fortress. A quick clean death was at least honorable—and oddly enough, Yhalen wished that much for Bloodraven.
Now had it been Deathclaw—if Yhalen had not taken care of the matter himself—that would have been another matter. He thought he would have shocked his gentle mother with his capacity for vengeful thoughts where that particular ogre was concerned.
Two days passed and they didn’t summon him. Yhalen began to think they wouldn’t. Began to think that Bloodraven was already dead and they had no need to question Yhalen about his identity. He began to relax a little more as the gathered villagers began to trickle out of the safety of the castle, desperate to return to their homes, their fields, and their livestock. More soldiers had come and Lord Dunval assured his people that he’d protect them. Yhalen began to contemplate his own departure from this place. No one had said he couldn’t leave, and certainly no one had paid him much heed since that first day of accusation and interrogation. He wondered if he ought to ask the lady of the keep, who seemed only slightly more approachable than her brother, just to avoid trouble should he be apprehended at the gates.
But then, rather unexpectedly, a pair of guards tracked him down in the servant’s quarters where he still was allowed to use a bunk, and flatly demanded that he come with them. They were not particularly communicative as to where, though, and Yhalen’s heart began to beat faster in dread when their path led to a thick doorway. When opened, it emitted the cool moist air of underground environs.
When he held back in uncertainty, asking again who summoned him and where, they frowned in irritation at having to coddle someone who was very obviously of the peasant class ,and snapped that it was their lady who’d asked for him and he’d know where when he got there. They threatened to cuff him if he hesitated longer and he glowered indignantly at them, steeling his courage in the face of their obvious disdain for him.
There must have been something in his eyes that hinted at more than peasant meekness, for the one with the raised fist backed down, grumbling, and they crowded behind him without laying a hand to him, but allowing no room for passage any way but down. So down he went, past the storage rooms and the wine cellars, on down to another level where the air was pungent with the smell of minerals and earth.
Being forest bred and weaned on the grace of the Goddess and the earth she nurtured, Yhalen found the close walls and the sense of so much earth and stone overhead stifling. He began to shiver a little, 68
feeling as if the walls were closing in, and fearing a collapse of the ceiling. When they passed by thick oaken doors with only small barred openings at eye level he knew they had reached the infamous dungeons he’d heard so much about from the simple folk above ground. If ever he had to dwell in such a place, Yhalen thought he would prefer swift execution to such a stifling existence.
There was a group of men at arms standing down the narrow hall, illuminated against the dark walls by both wall-mounted and hand-held lanterns. The men parted as Yhalen as his guides approached and he saw not only the lady of the keep, but her lord brother as well. Lord Dunval frowned darkly at him, but the lady’s mouth curved into a smile and she beckoned with a motion of one slender hand. She moved forward, meeting him halfway, and didn’t hesitate to put a hand lightly on the back of his arm.
“Ah, our Ydregi. How have you fared, these past days, Yhalen?”
He didn’t know what to say, since the truth was that he’d rather have taken his leave long past.
“Fine, my lady, though I’d rather be home. What do you wish of me?” he said, too uneasy for tact as his eyes darted nervously about the ominous, carved passage.
She smiled, though it hardly reached her eyes.
“You said he spoke our tongue. He has refused to do so, despite my brother’s best...
efforts
...and we wondered if he were even the one you spoke of after all, though most certainly there’s human blood running through his veins.”